LOCATION: From Business Highway 83 west of Mercedes, drive 1.3 miles
north on Mile Two West (from motel). Turn right (east) on Mile Nine Road and
proceed one mile. Make a left turn on Mile One West and drive about 150 feet
to cemetery entrance gate.

SURVEYED: Goldsby Goza and Fran Isbell in November 1979. Survey started
in southwest corner, proceeded south to north.

HISTORY: Rancho Guadalupe de Campacuas (originally Tampacuas) in Llano
Grande Land Grant was founded in 1836 by Antonio Cano (born in Spain 1812). As
was traditional, the ranch fronted on the Rio Grande for 1/3 mile, and
extended north about 15 miles. Ranch headquarters was on the wooded shores of
Lake Campacuas, a two-mile long resaca about 10 miles north of the Rio Grande.
Tanpacuaze Indians lived there before the 1870s.

In 1890, Cano donated 200 square feet for a school and Catholic chapel.
A few hundred yards north, he had land cleared for a cemetery. An extensive
landowner, Cano expanded the ranch and held other properties in Llano Grande
and Las Mestenas Land Grants, where he raised cattle and horses. He married
Mauricia Fernandez of Reynosa in 1830. They had five children.

When Antonio died in 1877, his widow continued to increase her lands.
About 1903, 89-year old Doña Mauricia sold Rancho Campacuas (3040 acres) and
all of Share 3 of Llano Grande Land Grant (over 26,000 acres) to the American
Rio Grande Land & Irrigation Company of Mercedes, which was constructing
what was then the largest surface irrigation system in the world. Hidalgo
County changed from an area of isolated ranch communities into urban
developments, and Campacuas became part of western Mercedes, one of the first
cities in Hidalgo County.